DISCLAIMOR: I don't own any of the characters in this story but Callie Taylor.. The rest I'm just having fun with ..

Again that's for the nice reviews

-Chapter Seven-

Ranger & Bobby's.. Little Talk

Bobby couldn't take his eyes off Callie as Stephanie led her away. His eyes stayed on the elevator door until he felt the sharp slap of a fist hitting his shoulder and turned to find Ranger standing there looking at him. He didn't looked pleased.

"In my office," Ranger growl, and started to walk that way, knowing Bobby would follow.

"Sit down," Ranger ordered, when the door to his office was closed and he and Bobby were alone. He pointed one long arm towards a chair in front of the desk as he moved to sit in the dark brown leather seat behind it.

The office was furnished in dark browns and beige. The desk was large with drawers that locked on either side. The top held a tan and gold marble pen holder with a calendar and digital clock, a file basket filled with reports Ranger needed to read and sign off on, and monthly expense reports he needed to initial and send back to his accountant. There were two chairs positioned in front of the desk, both were a few shades lighter than his own chair and a wet bar ran along the back of the room with a small sink and a frig filled with water, juice and a few bottles of beer.

"I'm not going to tell you how stupid you were letting your emotions get involved with a suspect. I think you already know you screwed up.. But thanks to Stephanie we might be able to salvage something out of this."

"Ranger.. I don't know what to say.." Bobby admitted, slowly shaking his head as if at a loss for a good excuse. "It started out as just a job.. But then she made me. She was starting to freak out seeing me everywhere she went. I had to come up with something so she didn't spook and run. So I told her I thought she was cute and asked her out. I only asked her out to save the case. I figured I could use it to try to get close to her.."

"Close was good.. Getting to know her and getting her to trust you was good," Ranger growled, making known his displeasure with only a slight change in his tone. "Sleeping with her was just plain stupid! When I hired you it was because you had the reputation of being able to think quickly with that thing on your shoulders.. not the one in your pants.. Did I make a mistake?"

Bobby shook his head. He didn't like where this was going. No one had ever questioned the way he did his job before. But then he'd never slept with a suspect before either. "No you weren't wrong.. I've done everything you assigned me to do and gotten you the information you wanted.. If I hadn't we never would have gotten the lead on Taylor coming back home."

"No.. We wouldn't have." Ranger agreed.

"So why wouldn't you trust me to bring her in on my own?" the other man finally found the guts to ask the question that had been burning a hole in his mind since he'd learned that Ranger had gone after Callie on his own and brought her back to the Rangeman offices. He hadn't known it was Callie in the interrogation room when he'd been asked to bring in the truth drugs until he saw her tied to the chair. He'd felt slightly betrayed.. but hid his feelings and did his job as instructed.

"You were gone picking up that FTA and we needed to move in quickly," he was told without apologizing. "Taylor was spotted less then fifty miles from here. I needed the girl put on ice so he couldn't get to her. It had nothing to do with the way you were doing your job. I didn't have any problem with that. Had you been here I would have told you to bring her in."

Ranger wondered if Bobby's head was in the right place to continue on with the assignment, or if maybe he should replace him with Tank. He hated to do that because he needed Tank to baby sit Stephanie when he himself couldn't be around to watch her. Tank was the Batman's Robin. Only a lot bigger. Tank came by his name legitimately. It only took one look at the man and people knew why he was called that. He was also the one person that Ranger trusted more then anyone else he knew to watch his own back. Tank would take a bullet for Ranger to save his life. He'd proved it more then once.

Tank had known Steph for almost as long as Ranger himself had, so he knew what to expect from her. She couldn't pull things on Tank any more then she could Ranger.. She knew better to try.. Ranger though, had ways of making Stephanie behave that the others would never dare try. They were too afraid of what Ranger might do to them.. But it also helped that Stephanie was a little bit afraid of him. It worked to Ranger's advantage. But if Bobby's head had been messed up by Taylor's sister, Ranger would have no choice but to reassign Tank to take over.

"I want the truth." The authority was strong in Ranger's tone. "I need to know if you can still do the job you were assigned to do or if you're going to have trouble remembering which part of your body to use to think with. I -need- your skills on this job Bobby. So for now I'll let you make the call. But if you decide to stay.. You need to stay focused on the job."

Bobby answered without even the slightest hesitation. "I can do the job. I'll make damn sure her bastard of a brother doesn't get anywhere near her. And I promise I won't screw up again."

Ranger heard the almost savage undertones in the man's words. Again he wondered if he was making a mistake by leaving Bobby on the case. It reminded him suddenly of the way he had felt the last time someone out there was trying to kill Stephanie, and suddenly Bobby's reaction to the danger the girl was in was starting to make some sense.

"Please... Tell me you didn't fall in love with her?"

At first Bobby didn't answer. His hands came up, fingers raked through the dark brown waves of his hair. He knew better then to lie to his boss. The man was no fool. He could read a person better then anyone Bobby had ever met before.

"Yeah.. I guess I did," Bobby looked up and met the eyes of the man he admired,# as well as respected. "God help me I didn't mean for it to happen when I started this job... It's just that the more time I spent with her the more I came to care for her and I wish like hell the last two months I've know her weren't based on a lie. I –liked- being with her. She's something special. Unlike any woman I've known before... And now she hates my guts and wants me to go to hell."

"She's also a suspect," Ranger reminded him. "Or did you forget the e-mails you yourself found on the computer in her home? Or the fact that every time she gave you the slip, someone looking like her, using the fake name she took on, showed up to pay a visit to her brother?"

"I haven't forgotten that fact.. Trust me.. I can't forget it." he growled. "Like you said.. I found the damn things hidden on the computer. But I just don't see her being able to pull something like that off without me trigging onto it. She just doesn't have that kind of personality."

"You think not?"

"No.. Ranger I'd stake my life on her innocence, and not just because I've been sleeping with her," the man exclaimed, somewhat heatedly. "For one thing.. she never hid the computer from me, nor did she ever try to stop me from getting on and using it. Even when she thought I worked for a company who set up systems for other companies. She never even flinched when I went into the file manager to –repair- a program that for -some reason- stopped working."

"Then how do you explain them being there?" The owner of Rangeman wanted answers. "Do you know if anyone else had access to the computer? A repair man or maybe a friend of hers?"

"The roommate," Bobby said after a moments though. "She claimed she didn't know anything about -them contraptions- but we came home early one night from a movie we'd gone to see.. we'd gotten the times wrong.. I saw her slipping out of Callie's office with some lame excuse about looking for a stamp. I looked in the room before she could get the door shut and saw the monitor shutting down. I let it go until she went into her own room, then slipped inside myself and found the computer was hot to the touch.. It would have been cold if it hadn't been used while we were gone.

Ranger's cell phone rang just then and he flipped it open. "Yo," he answered and listen for a few minutes to the person on the other end. His face never changed expressions until he ended the call.

"You may be right," Ranger, nodded his head slightly in acceptance of his employee's assessment of the situation. "What do we have on the roommate?"

"Stephanie was going to run a check on her as soon as she got Callie settled into an apartment on four," the taller of the two men stated as he got up to pace around the room.

"It has to be her though. She's the only one who has access to the home when we're not... I mean when Callie's not there."

"How did the two of the meet and become roommates?"

"I don't really know," he frowned. "Maybe Stephanie might know. I do know that the girl seems nice. She's got a good sense of humor and her and Callie get along like they've known each other a long time. I wouldn't have thought of her if not for the computer incident. I really didn't get to know her all that well.. Callie liked to get out of the house and go do things all the time.. so I went along with her to make her happy and prove how smitten I was with her charms."

Ranger gave a short snort and shot the man a look full of pity. "Did you go shopping at the mall with her too?"

"Yeah so... What?" Bobby growled when he saw his boss shaking his head with a little eye rolling action

"In all the years I've known you, I never thought to see the day some chick would turn your mind to mush. She's got you by the balls. You're whipped!"

The younger man glared at him. Wondering if he'd still have a job after beating the hell out of his boss. No one called him Whipped! He was half out of his chair, with thoughts about coming across the desk after the other man, but then his brain started to work again and he remembered who it was he was going after. Even he wasn't that stupid.

Ranger never moved a muscle. He just sat there with that knowing grin on his handsome face.

"Oh shit! Say it ain't so.." Bobby swore softly as he dropped back down in the chair.. He looked up at his boss wanting to deny his words, but he knew there was no way he could. Callie had his heart and he'd do just about anything for her to make her happy. "I'm whipped."

"And..?" Ranger's knowing grin turned into a full blown –I told you so- smile.

"The hell I know what I'm going to do about it."

"Would you feel better being out in the field with me and letting Stephanie and Tank keep an eye on the girl?"

"No!" Bobby's head shot up and he looked Ranger straight in the eye. "Look Ranger.. I know I screwed up big time.. But I mean to marry this girl once this is over if I can get her to talk to me and listen to my lame excuses... I'll beg her to forgive me and give me another try if I have too... Until then -I'll- protect her. Not Tank. Not Stephanie. Me.. So what are we going to do now?"

"Now we bait the hook and use it to real in a killer."

To be continued...

Next up... Stephanie has her own talk with Callie.. Who's not to happy to find out she's stuck with Bobby weather she wants to be or not...